Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2011 Newsletter
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Collaborative Learning: eTwinning
Strengths and Weaknesses Towards
Possibilities and Challenges
By Helena Serdoura
Helena Serdoura is a teacher of English as a foreign
language and of Portuguese as mother tongue at
Agrupamento de Escolas de Eiriz in Ancede,
Portugal.
1. Collaborative learning - an experiential
approach
Kincheloe (2006:20) refers that the world is socially
constructed in the sense that people and the
knowledge they produce reinvent themselves with
the culture tools they have at hand. That is to say
that constructivism conceives learning as a
continuous process that results from the
interactions between individuals with the world and
the interpretations they make of them. In this
sense, students are the epicentre and the teacher
the guide who needs to assure the necessary
conditions for social-cultural experiences by means
of multiple contexts and sources aiming to
guarantee their intrinsic needs and motivations are
taken into consideration.
Understanding the stages inherent to each
individual learning process requires, in the
Kohonen‘s perspective, ―conscious reflection on
learning experiences and the sharing of such
reflections with other learners in cooperative groups
making it possible to increase one‘s awareness of
learning‖ (1992: 24). In other words, if students
share experiences and reflections in collaborative
environments, the discussions and comparisons
about the distinctive ways of learning are bound to
help them to a clear understanding of the processes
they undergo as much as the learning strategies
that work best for them. This is to say that the level
of students‘ involvement in the negotiations and
decision-making of their learning process can
indicate the degree of their self-directed learning.
In fact, and taking into consideration collaborative
learning characteristics, one may consider that
collaborative learning situations seem to provide a
beneficial environment to meet the above
educational aims. In the same line of thoughts, the
eTwinning Pedagogical Advisory Group (2006: 1)
started its reflection by stating that collaboration
provides more space for independent and selfresponsible learning.
2. eTwinning and collaborative learning:
a.
This line of thought follows Kohonen‘s (1992: 1417) views regarding experiential learning which in
his words is a sequential learning cycle where
personal experiences are processed conscientiously
through reflection, followed by abstract
conceptualizations and then new interactions with
the environment. The reflective practice comes as a
bridge that links experi